GraphQL is a new way of communicating with your server. It eliminates the problems of over- and under-fetching, incorporates strong data types, has built-in introspection, documentation and deprecation capabilities, and is implemented in many programming languages. This all leads to gloriously low-latency user experiences, better developer experiences, and much increased productivity. Because of all this, GraphQL is typically used as a replacement for (or companion to) RESTful API services.

PostgreSQL is the self-proclaimed “world’s most advanced open source database,” with each new release bring more amazing features and performance gains. Thinking of your database as a plain CRUD store is now an archaic viewpoint as modern PostgreSQL can do so much for you — from authorization with Row-Level Security (RLS, introduced in PG9.5), through Foreign Data Wrappers (FDW), to real time notifications with LISTEN/NOTIFY.

PostGraphile pairs these two incredible technologies together, helping you not only build applications more rapidly, but to build lightning-fast applications. PostGraphile allows you to access the power of PostgreSQL through a well designed, extensible, customisable and incredibly performant GraphQL server. It automatically detects tables, columns, indexes, relationships, views, types, functions, comments, and more - providing a GraphQL server that is highly intelligent about your data, and that automatically updates itself without restarting when you change your database schema.

With PostGraphile, a well designed database schema should serve the basis for a well thought out API. PostgreSQL already has amazing authorization and relationship infrastructure, why duplicate that logic in a custom API? A PostGraphile API is likely to provide a more performant and standards compliant GraphQL API then any created in-house, and can be built in a fraction of the time. Focus on your product and let PostGraphile worry about the API layer. Once you need to expand beyond this, we have a powerful plugin system including many community contributed plugins. For a critical evaluation of PostGraphile to determine if it fits in your tech stack, read evaluating PostGraphile for your project.

Crowd-funded open-source software

In exchange for the incredible freedom we give in how this software can be used (thanks to the permissive MIT license) we ask the individuals and businesses that use it to sponsor ongoing maintenance and development. A huge amount of work goes into producing and maintaining this powerful and professional software, please give back via sponsorship.

Introduction

Watch a talk by the original author Caleb at GraphQL Summit for a walk-through of building an application with PostGraphile in under 7 minutes. This was using v2 (then called PostGraphQL); we're now up to v4 which has many more bells and whistles!

Hear from the current maintainer Benjie at GraphQL Finland about the benefits of Database-Driven GraphQL Development:

Usage

You can use PostGraphile via the CLI, as a Node.js middleware, or use the GraphQL schema directly. Make sure to check out the full usage instructions on the documentation website. We also have a PostgreSQL schema design guide you can follow to build a fully functional PostGraphile API.

CLI

To get started you can install PostGraphile globally:

npm install -g postgraphile

…and then just run it! By default, PostGraphile will connect to your local database at postgres://localhost:5432 and introspect the public schema. See the available CLI flags with:

postgraphile --help

When you're ready to use PostGraphile for your own project, you're advised to install it locally with yarn, and run it with npx:

A humongous, heart-felt, thank you to the original author of PostGraphile - Caleb Meredith - for everything he put into PostGraphile! He's now graduated from the project and we all wish him the best for his future ventures!

Thanks also to the people working on PostgREST which was a huge inspiration for this project!